House of Cards GM Log

Middle Age

posted by Ginger at 11:39 PM, November 30, 2004 | Filed under : GM Notes | Comments and Followups

House of Cards has definitely hit midgame, although we’re in the early part of the midgame. I can tell this because I find myself instinctively getting careful about adding further major plots (as opposed to complications and curlicues added to existing plots) or opening major additional venues of play that don’t have to do with existing backstory or existing plots.

There’s definitely still a lot out there that the players haven’t done much with. For instance, nobody has been to Tir, nobody has messed much with the Moonriders, and there are several home shadows that haven’t been touched yet (not to mention the contribution shadows that various players have generated). Plus there are some yummy NPCs that nobody has investigated much. But many of the locations and people I expect to see come into play are already on the GM back burner.

Enough of that back-burner stuff is out there, untouched, that there’s still plenty of room for PCs and players who are ready to move on from their current plots without having to generate all-new stuff for them. I’m happy for players to explore, but most of the PCs have two or three or even more irons in the fire, and I’d like to see some of those irons dealt with and some of the hanging plot threads tied off before I go generating tons more new stuff.

That feels to me like midgame, or maturity, or something: wanting to resolve what we have instead of adding more stuff.

Follow up: the trackback URL for this entry is: http://www.whiterose.org/MT/mt-tb.cgi/4762

2 Comments

Andy
Dec 1, 2004 9:23 PM

I had the sense that House of Cards might be played for decades, if not forever. Do you envision and end to the game?

Ginger
Dec 1, 2004 9:29 PM

Oh, yes, there's a definite end to the story. We could play beyond that, and even have plans for chapters 2 and 3 of the campaign, but there is an ending.

Probably it'll take us 10 years to get there, though.

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